Understanding industry trends allows equipment manufacturers to offer products better suited to these trends, while enabling user companies to plan their equipment purchases in advance and gain a forward-looking perspective for business development.
To meet the demands of the gear processing industry for manufacturing precision, production efficiency, clean production, and improved quality, the following development trends have emerged in gear-making machine tools and gear-making technology.
1. Numerical control
By controlling the various motion axes of the machine tool using CNC and linking some axes together, the following advantages are achieved:
1) The functions of the machine tool have been increased, such as making the hobbing of small tapers and drum gears extremely simple.
2) The transmission chain is shortened, and with the adoption of semi-closed-loop or full-closed-loop control, the positioning accuracy and repeatability of each axis can be improved through CNC compensation, thereby improving the machining accuracy and Cp value of the machine tool and increasing the reliability of the machine tool.
3) When changing gear types, the gear shaper eliminates the time spent on calculations, changing gear trains and differential trains, feed and spindle shifting, and also eliminates the time spent changing slant guides, thereby reducing auxiliary processing time and increasing the flexibility of the machine tool.
4) Because the mechanical structure has become simpler, it can be designed to be more conducive to improving the rigidity of the machine tool and minimizing thermal deformation.
5) There is no mechanical connection between the axes, the structural design becomes more typical, and it is more conducive to the implementation of modular design and manufacturing.
2. High speed and high efficiency
The high-speed development of gear processing machine tools such as hobbing machines, gear shaping machines, and gear grinding machines mainly refers to the high spindle speed and high table speed of the machine tools, which are the main indicators for improving cutting efficiency. Traditional mechanical hobbing machines typically have a maximum spindle speed of 500 r/min and a maximum table speed of 32 r/min. (Metalworking WeChat, good content, worth following). With the improvement of gear processing tool performance, high-speed and high-efficiency cutting of gear processing machine tools has developed and matured rapidly. Gear hobbing cutting speeds have increased from 100 m/min to 500-600 m/min, and cutting feed rates have increased from 3-4 mm/r to 20 mm/r. This allows the maximum spindle speed of the hobbing machine to reach 5500 r/min, the maximum table speed to reach 800 r/min, and the machine tool component movement speed to reach 10 m/min. High-power spindle systems allow the machine tools to use grinding wheels with larger diameters and lengths, which helps increase grinding wheel life and allows operators to select optimal grinding parameters to complete the grinding process.
3. High precision
Thanks to the adoption of high-precision, preloaded, high-rigidity linear guides, ball screws, rolling bearings, electric spindles, torque motors, and CNC technology, the accuracy of gear machining machines under high-speed machining conditions is guaranteed and improved. The electric spindle accuracy is generally 0.002mm radial runout and 0.001mm axial runout; the ring torque servo motor achieves a positioning accuracy of 0.5" and a repeatability of 0.01"; the linear motion axis positioning accuracy is less than 0.008mm and the repeatability is less than 0.005mm. Although gear hobbing and gear shaping are roughing processes, they can still achieve DIN 6-7 grade accuracy under high-speed cutting conditions, ensuring high precision for subsequent finishing processes. With the increase in gear grinding machine production efficiency, the reduction in the cost of grinding a single gear, and the continuous pursuit of higher precision in automotive gears, the market demand for gear grinding machines is growing. Simultaneously, with the development of CNC technology, functional extensions between various machine tools are more easily achieved. Therefore, under intense market competition, major gear machine tool manufacturers worldwide have joined the ranks of producing gear finishing machine tools, represented by gear grinding machines. This trend will lead to the increasing adoption of hobbing-grinding processes in future automotive gear manufacturing.
4. Functional integration
Multifunctional machine tools refer to machines that can perform multiple processing steps on a single machine tool or in a single workpiece clamping, thereby improving the processing efficiency and even the precision of the workpiece.
5. Green and environmentally friendly
The application of cutting fluid during cutting can improve tool life, enhance surface finish, and facilitate heat dissipation, preventing thermal deformation of the machine tool. However, the splashing of cutting fluid and the resulting oil mist during high-speed cutting are particularly harmful to the environment, especially the health of operators. Therefore, the machining area is usually enclosed with a protective cover and equipped with an oil mist separator, ensuring that only oil-free mist is discharged, while the cutting oil is recycled back into the machine tool. However, this does not fundamentally solve the environmental problem, as the replacement and discharge of deteriorated cutting fluid severely pollutes the environment. In wet gear machining, the cost of cutting fluid and related equipment accounts for approximately 20% of the machining cost. High-speed dry cutting can increase machining efficiency by 2-3 times, and tool life is 2-5 times that of wet cutting. Therefore, dry cutting reduces the machining cost per gear. (Metalworking WeChat, good content, worth following.) High-speed dry cutting reduces cutting fluid consumption and cooling equipment, avoids environmental pollution, improves production efficiency, and lowers the manufacturing cost per gear.
6. Intelligent
The integration of digital control technology, sensor technology, information technology, and network control technology has significantly enhanced the intelligence level of CNC gear machining tools. Gear machining tools must achieve functions such as error compensation, temperature compensation, automatic balancing, anti-collision function, overload protection, automatic workpiece presence/absence identification, workpiece clamping accuracy, workpiece pre-processing detection, gear meshing, machining allowance allocation, tool wear monitoring, online precision inspection, automatic grinding wheel dressing, zero-programming interface, multi-functional machining software, cutting process expert system, automatic identification of robots handling workpieces between machine tools, remote control, and remote diagnostics. While intelligence is fundamental to improving the reliability, safety, stability, machining of complex parts, precision machining, and unmanned production of gear machining tools, it will inevitably continue to be improved and enhanced.
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